Its What They Do At The GooglePlex When They're Bored

You'd think working for search giant Google would be exciting enough to keep your days busy. Apparently that is not so, as several Googlers have had to resort to good old fashioned fun for passing their time.

Google software engineers Alan Davidson and Dustin Boswell recently showed off a new toy that will take most of us back to the days of magnifying glasses and the burning of ants. According to the recent post on the Official Google Blog "Will it lens?" Alan, Dustin and a few other members of Google's Santa Monica office pooled their money together to buy a four-foot by three-foot Fresnel lens.

Since then they've spent lunch hours burning anything from old pennies to aluminum cans. They've even found a great new way to cook up some breakfast attempting to fry some bacon and eggs (although they weren't very successful)

When we tried to cook bacon, about a third ended up well done, a third was burnt, and a third was uncooked. Cooking with the lens is difficult because it heats stuff up too hot too fast. But the well-cooked parts tasted great, so we added an egg:

From the pictures posted on Alan's LiveJournal it looks like they've been having a bit of fun with that new toy. Ahh the memories that brings back of trying to fry anything and everything with that old magnifying glass. The guys are looking for suggestions and ideas to try to out. If you have any head over to Alan's blog and post them a comment.